and read the letters of the municipal authorities at Varennes and of St. Menehould brought by M. Mangin, surgeon, at Varennes.  The Assembly then nominated three commissioners out of the members to bring the king back to Paris.  These three commissioners were Barnave, Petion, and Latour-Maubourg, and they instantly started off to fulfil their mission.  Let us now for a brief space leave Paris a prey to all the different emotions of surprise, joy, and indignation excited by the flight and arrest of the king.

XXI.

The night at Varennes had been passed by the king, the queen, and the people in alternate feelings of hope and terror.  Whilst the children, fatigued with a long day’s journey, and the heat of the weather, slept soundly, the king and queen, guarded by the municipal guards of Varennes, discussed, in a low voice, the danger of their position, their pious sister, Madame Elizabeth, prayed by their side; her kingdom was, indeed, “in heaven.”  Nothing had induced her to remain at the court, from which she was estranged, alike by her piety and her renouncement of all worldly pleasure, but her affection for her brother, and she had shared only the sorrows and sufferings of the throne.

The prisoners were far from despairing yet; they had no doubt that M. de Bouille, warned by one of the officers whom he had stationed on the road, would march all night to their assistance; and they attributed his delay to the necessity of collecting a sufficient force to overpower the numerous troops of national guards whom the sound of the tocsin had summoned to Varennes.  But at each instant they expected to see him appear, and the least movement of the populace, the slightest clash of arms in the streets, seemed to announce his arrival; the courier despatched to Paris by the authorities of Varennes to receive the orders of the Assembly, only left at three o’clock in the morning.  He could not reach Paris in less than twenty hours, and would require as much more for his return; and the Assembly would require, at least three or four hours more to deliberate; thus M. de Bouille must have forty-eight hours’ start of any orders from Paris.

Moreover, in what state would Paris be? what would have happened there at the unexpected announcement of the king’s departure?  Had not terror or repentance taken possession of every mind; would not anarchy have destroyed the feeble barriers that an anarchical assembly might have opposed to it?  Would not the cry of treason have been the first signal of alarm?  La Fayette have been torn to pieces as a traitor, and the national guard disbanded?  Would not the well-intentioned and loyal citizens have again obtained the mastery over the factious and turbulent in the confusion and terror that would prevail?  Who would give orders? who would execute them?

The nation trembling, and in disorder, would fall perhaps at the feet of its king.  Such were the chimaeras, the last fond hopes of this unfortunate family, and on which they sustained their courage, during this fatal night, in the small and suffocating room into which they were all crowded.